The invention relates to a shaped charge for combating armored targets, with a liner in the form of a metaIlic hollow body which is surrounded by an explosive charge, the axis of the liner deviating from the axis of the explosive charge.
Because of the great progress achieved in the field of protective armor during the last 15 years increasingly large, warhead calibers and missible length, e.g., for tandem charges, are required, to defeat armored vehicles with shaped charges by front attack. As a result, it becomes increasingly impossible to defeat tanks with man-portable antiarmor weapons by a frontal artacx.
Therefore, missiles have been developed for some years which do not attack the vehicle from the front where it is provided with the strongest armor, but rather at more weakly armored sections. This is achieved by a flight path which leads the missile either beside, below or above the target. The shaped-charge warhead is arranged in the missile in such a manner that the axis of the shaped charge forms an angle with the axis of the missile which may amount, for example, to 90.degree. . The shaped charge warhead is ignited at an instant when the missile is either beside, below or above a weakly armored position of the vehicle, e. g., the roof. If conventional shaped charges are used for such an overfly attack, the penetration of the shaped-charge jet, compared with the penetration of the same charge fired at rest, is strongly reduced by the fact that the velocity of the missile is superposed on the velocity of the individual jet particles. As the different particles of the shaped-charge jet in general have different velocities, a velocity component. whose direction deviates from the direction of the shaped-charge axis causes the elements of the shaped-charge jet to hit the tank surface at different positions cr to touch the walls of the crater produced by the previous jet particles. This effect results in a drastic reduction of the penetration depth, e. g., typically to about 25 %, for a conventionally shaped charge. A known approach to a solution consists in accelerating the shaped charge inside the missile, to the velocity of the missile, but opposite to the flight direction. The charge will be ignited when the final velocity is reached. Acceleration of the shaped charge can be achieved, e. g., by means of a pyrotechnical propellant charge. This method is not very effective since a major dead volume for accelerating the charge has to be provided inside the missile which cannot be used otherwise.